The portability of a computer peripheral device now has become an important factor in the research and design of a commercially available electronic device. Furthermore, the complexity and expansibility of computer readable file and software programs are gradually increasing. It is clearly that the conventional magnetic diskette is insufficient to keep record of computer readable data and software programs today. The emergence of a variety of portable storage media that are furnished with a large storage capacity and convenient maneuverability is appropriate for the replacement of the conventional magnetic diskette.
Up to now there have been proposed a great amount of solutions to straighten out the inconvenience caused by conventional magnetic diskette. In consideration of these solutions, flash memory is by far the most widely used recordable/rewritable memory component. The electric characteristics of a flash memory make it allowable to be programmed by virtue of the variation of an applied voltage to change the contents stored therein. Moreover, due to the advantages of a flash memory, e.g. small size, low power consumption and large storage capacity, it has been introduced into a variety of portable electronic products, for example, digital still camera, MP3 walkman, portable digital assistant (PDA) and so forth. The common categories of flash-based memory device include compact flash card (CF card), smart media card (SM card), and memory stick.
However, due to the stiff marketing price of a memory card, typically a user is used to backup or temporarily store the data contained in the memory card to other storage medium, in order that the memory card can be reused iteratively.
Based upon the foregoing reasons, a conventional measure for processing data is to use a card reader installed on a computer to read the data contained in a memory card, and then transcribe the data in order to be recorded in a hard disk drive fitted within the computer, a compact disc or other types of storage medium. If the storage capacity/marketing price ratio of a storage medium is to be taken into consideration, the most economical and favorable way is to use a compact disc recorder to record the desired data into a compact disc. Despite of the popularity and convenience of a compact disc, the operating method of a compact disc recorder is quite complicated and its utilization is not so facilitating for an awkward user as to produce enormous junk compact discs. In addition, when user desires to use a portable electronic device, such as a digital still camera in an outdoor environment, if there is no free space available in the memory card serving as the storage medium of the portable electronic device, the image data contained within the portable electronic device can not be transcribed and recorded in other storage media due to lack of a computer equipment. The portable electronic device can not be used any longer and thereby causes considerable inconvenience. Also, in a situation where the user needs to have the image data transformed into a slide show or a simple movie for immediate playback on a video disc player, he may have to have a computer nearby and perform necessary edittings using typical authoring software, which requires manual labour and sometimes leads to a waste of time.